ALBANY -- The state Senate Democrats' campaign committee is more than $2.45 million in debt, a figure expected to rise when legal costs from three disputed races are factored in.

Despite the shortfall, Democrats are pushing for a hand recount in Nassau County, where Sen. Craig Johnson trails his Republican opponent Jack Martins by some 400 votes. Weeks of legal wrangling in Erie and Niagara counties ended with the Tuesday concession of Sen. Antoine Thompson, D-Buffalo, to Mark Grisanti, handing the GOP a 31st confirmed seat in the 62-member chamber.

Another race in Westchester County has not been officially decided, but Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer, D-Mamaroneck, leads her Republican challenger. Her win would give the Democrats 30 seats.

So the Nassau County recount could be the Democrats' Hail Mary pass to retain at least split control of the chamber, and party officials are pushing forward no matter the cost.

"Whatever the cost, we're going to raise the resources necessary to pay it off," said Austin Shafran, a spokesman for Senate Democrats. "We're going to exhaust every resource possible to ensure every vote is counted."

He said legal expenses would be paid from a separate campaign account that isn't required to file a public disclosure until January.

Steven Schlesinger, a Democratic attorney working on the Johnson count, said it's important work. He said new optical scanning machines "suck," and estimated 40 percent failed a required audit; that represents 1,200 votes in the district.

"I believe it's mathematically possible that he'll win it. When you talk about mathematically probable, I'm not a statistician," Schlesinger said. "There will be more votes counted than the margin; whether enough of those votes fall for Craig Johnson, I don't know."

It's just as important, he said, to set a legal precedent that mandates a hand recount. This is the first year elections in New York have been conducted with the new voting machines, and it's the first time there is a verifiable trail of paper ballots.

"They were designed with multiple backups so that, in theory, you would not have a Bush v. Gore contest with misread ballots," he said.

Republicans say Democrats should throw in the towel in Johnson's race, and have intimated in recent days that they are only prolonging the efforts to help them raise money to pay their debts.

"We don't believe it's necessary to do a hand recount of tens of thousands of votes that have already been counted," said Scott Reif, a spokesman for Senate Republicans. "Jack Martins is clearly the winner of this race, and it shouldn't be tied up. There's a lot of important work to do and we need to move forward, switching from elections to governing."

And the money spent on lawyering for Thompson? "Listen, when you've got everything at stake, it doesn't matter what you're in the hole," said Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant who normally works for Democrats.

Shafran declined to predict how much the legal bills might cost, or how long the counting might continue. He said the committee has ended the election cycle in debt before, but no New York campaign committee has been this deep in the red during the last decade.

Schlesigner said he expects Supreme Court Justice Ira Warshawsky could order a hand recount by the end of this week. From then, Schlesinger estimates it would take a team of lawyers an hour to review ballots from each of the 259 machines in the Seventh Senate District. So six teams could finish in just over a week.

It's very important, he said.

"That will be the precedent that will be set for all future close races," he said. "God forbid we have a governor's race of within 400 votes."